This isn't true, is it? While they do get to keep profits, if the bets don't pay off, the bankers - shareholders, bondholders, employees, executives - all get wiped out (as happened with SI, Signature and SVB). The depositors get bailed out.
They get to keep profits if they win, but lose everything if they don't. No moral hazard, right?
Indeed, in the SVB case there is probably an interesting story around why all these startups were banking with this one bank. It suggests complex relationships between entities and it wouldn't be that weird if it turns out the people being bailed out and the equity holders going broke are the same physical people.
I'd start by stopping any securitization and having the banks keep all their loan assets on their own balance sheets.
If sensible people made the rules the financial industry would be stable and boring, inequality would be far lower than it is, prosperity would be far wider, and life would generally be more pleasant and financially successful - not just for a small cadre of middle class programmers, but for everyone.
I concur...While this might be true for smaller banks, the same cannot be said about the "too big to fail" banks.
And are you talking about people with more than 250k, or everyone else?
The former wouldn't destroy banks, and if you think insurance for everyone else is a problem then why has it taken 90 years to be such an issue?
If the FED didn't step in, every regional bank in the country would experience a bank run as people would withdraw everything and deposit in the "too big to fail" banks for safety.
Why I think the depositors should've suffered a haircut: What the FED did, was implicitly guarantee the deposits, this incentivize banks to become even riskier with deposits as they get to keep the profits if their risky bets payoff and get bailed out if they fail. This is like a real life cheat code for bankers and unfair to the rest of us regular folks who has to suffer the consequences of our actions.